Birmingham turned on the sunshine for the prestigious #BISA2024 conference this week, and BOS member Dr. John Tull helped shine a little light on the issue of how major defence organisations learn in an ever-more complex environment.
The paper “Military Learning Practices: Organisational Learning in the Portuguese Army”, based on 70+ interviews and workshops in Portugal, further elaborates John’s ongoing collaborative research [via a project funded by the ESRC] to explore organisational learning and its effects on institutional adaptability and innovation. These effects extend beyong the military to a range of public sector actors that also face ‘extreme contexts’ for decisionmaking and action.
Following the paper, co-presented with Prof. Tom Dyson of Royal Holloway University of London, a lively panel Q&A session explored the deep entanglement of learning, leadership and organisational process issues in promising ways.
John will make a related presentation on his ongoing research programme at the NUSC Meeting on 12 July; hopefully it will lead to energetic discussion of ideas for extending this practitioner-academic collaborative research.

– John (right) with fellow international scholar panellists, BISA 2024.